WASHINGTON — NASA and SpaceX are investigating how to change the Dragon spacecraft’s reentry process to reduce the amount of debris from the spacecraft’s fuselage that reaches the ground.
On several occasions, debris from parts of the Dragon spacecraft’s fuselage that are ejected from the capsule before the capsule performs a deorbital burn has been found on land. They include debris from the Crew-1 Crew Dragon found in Australia in 2022; the Axe-3 Crew Dragon that crashed in Saskatchewan in February; and the Crew-7 strain, fragments of which were found in North Carolina in May.
In August 2022, shortly after the wreckage of Crew-1 was found in Australia, a SpaceX official downplayed the incident as an isolated incident. “This was all within the expected analyzed space of what could happen,” said Benji Reed, SpaceX’s senior director of human space programs, at a NASA briefing. “However, as with launches and any return, we are watching the data very closely, learning everything we can and always looking for ways to improve things.”
After recent debris sightings, NASA and SpaceX now acknowledge that improvements are needed. The agency recently said that initial studies expected the trunk to burn up completely upon re-entry. “NASA and SpaceX will continue to explore other solutions as we learn from the discovered debris,” NASA said.
“We did the analysis before Demo-2, and it’s clear that the models don’t handle the suitcase very well,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said in an interview after the Starliner briefing before the mission’s June 6 launch. He said this is probably due to the composite materials used in the trunk. “It’s almost like a thermal protection system.
The solution he said NASA and SpaceX are looking at involves changing deorbiting procedures. Currently, the strain is released before the capsule burns into orbit. This means that the strain can remain in lunar orbit before making an uncontrolled reentry.
Instead, Stich said engineers are investigating a deorbit burn and then releasing the trunk. This would give more control over where the tribe returns and ensure that any debris that survives the return lands in unpopulated areas.
“We’re working on that job right now,” he said. “I would like to see us introduce something next year if possible, but we have to do all the right analysis. We have to make sure it’s safe for the crew.”
The challenges of this alternative approach include using additional propellant for the deorbit burn while the fuselage is still attached, and then figuring out how best to separate the fuselage after the burn. Stich said engineers are considering several ways to do this, which would have the trunk travel further down on its return from the capsule, so any debris would fall into the ocean.
Concerns about the risks of falling debris have grown not only from the Dragon trunks, but also from a piece of the ISS battery rack that made an uncontrolled return on March 8. A piece of that rack, weighing nearly three-quarters of a kilogram, survived the return and hit a house in Naples, Florida. Debris fell through the roof of the house but caused no injuries.
On June 21, law firm Cranfill Sumner LLP announced that it had filed a claim with NASA for an estimated $80,000 in damages from the debris. The filing, which some media have mistakenly reported as a lawsuit, is instead a claim under federal tort law, which gives NASA six months to respond to the claims.
Mica Nguyen Worthy, a lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of a family whose home was damaged, noted that under a space treaty known as the Liability Convention, the United States would be “absolutely liable” for damages if the debris hit another country, but the same is absolutely not true here because the damage occurred in the United States.
“Here, the US government, through NASA, has an opportunity to set the standard or ‘set a precedent’ for what responsible, safe and sustainable space operations should look like,” she said in a statement. She concluded that paying the claim would “send a strong signal to both other governments and private industry that such victims should be compensated regardless of fault”.
Others see opportunity in the falling debris. The wreckage of Crew-7’s suitcase landed at a luxury campsite called The Glamping Collective, where his photographs were displayed. “We invite you to experience it for yourself!” stated on its website that the wreckage will be displayed at the beginning of the hiking trail.